Related papers: Attitude Control of an Inflatable Sailplane for Ma…
The Colour and Stereo Surface Science Imaging System (CaSSIS) of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter returns on average twenty images per day of the Martian surface, most of them in 3 or 4 colours and some of them in stereo. CaSSIS uses a…
The Ingenuity helicopter test flights on Mars in April 2021 marked the first time a powered aircraft has flown on another world. Students who have access to model helicopters and drones may wonder, how well could those hover on the Red…
Beyond space exploration, the next critical step towards living and working in space requires developing a space economy. One important challenge with this space-economy is ensuring the low-cost transport of raw materials from one…
Recently, a practical and publicly accessible satellite standard called the SmallSat has amplified public involvement in orbital research. This allows for flexible and efficient deployments of impactful low-earth-orbit experiments that…
Terraforming Mars can be evaluated with a set of system-level constraints linking (i) target pressures & compositions to required atmospheric inventories, (ii) target surface temperatures to the required radiative control, (iii) inventories…
With advancements in low-cost launchers and small interplanetary spacecraft, NASA has recognized the potential of small missions to perform focused planetary science investigations at Mars and Venus. The EscaPADE, part of the NASA SIMPLEx…
Recently, the progress in the radar sensing technology consisting in the miniaturization of the packages and increase in measuring precision has drawn the interest of the robotics research community. Indeed, a crucial task enabling autonomy…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) rely on measurements from Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) to maintain stable flight. However, IMUs are susceptible to physical attacks, including acoustic resonant and electromagnetic interference attacks,…
Mars is the next milestone in human exploration. However, there are still several challenges that must be assessed to ensure appropriate conditions in a future settlement. Communications services will be essential for this task, providing…
Modular Aerial Robotic Systems (MARS) consist of multiple drone units assembled into a single, integrated rigid flying platform. With inherent redundancy, MARS can self-reconfigure into different configurations to mitigate rotor or unit…
Here we discuss one of the current reservoirs of water on Mars, the regolith and rocks exposed at the surface. This reservoir is characterized by the presence of H_{2}O- and OH- bearing phases that produce a broad absorption at a wavelength…
Air-bearing platforms for simulating the rotational dynamics of satellites require highly precise ground truth systems. Unfortunately, commercial motion capture systems used for this scope are complex and expensive. This paper shows a novel…
Accurate localization is crucial for water robotics, yet traditional onboard Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) approaches are difficult or ineffective due to signal reflection on the water's surface and its high cost of aquatic GNSS…
We propose to develop a full-accuracy flight test environment for the Mars helicopter and related Mars-atmospheric vehicles. The experiment would use reduced-g atmospheric flights with an aircraft that houses a properly sized vacuum…
LaRa (Lander Radioscience) is an experiment on the ExoMars 2020 mission that uses the Doppler shift on the radio link due to the motion of the ExoMars platform tied to the surface of Mars with respect to the Earth ground stations (e.g. the…
In this paper, we analyze water ice occurrences at the surface of Mars using near-infrared observations, and we study their distribution with a climate model. Latitudes between 45{\deg}S and 50{\deg}N are considered. Data from the…
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's (MRO's) Mars Color Imager (MARCI) has returned approximately daily, approximately global image data of Mars since late 2006, in up to seven different colors, from ultraviolet through near-infrared. To-date,…
Mars exploration requires precise and reliable terrain models to ensure safe rover navigation across its unpredictable and often hazardous landscapes. Stereoscopic vision serves a critical role in the rover's perception, allowing scene…
The High Inclination Solar Mission (HISM) is a concept for an out-of-the-ecliptic mission for observing the Sun and the heliosphere. The mission profile is largely based on the Solar Polar Imager concept: initially spiraling in to a 0.48 AU…
The ever-changing transparency of the Martian atmosphere hinders the determination of absolute surface colour from spacecraft images. While individual high-resolution images from low orbit reveal numerous colour details of the geology, the…